May 9th 2017. Exshaw, Alberta
Round Trip: 10 hours Elevation Gain: 1000m
Easy Scramble for Heart Mountain & Grant MacEwan Peak
Moderate-Difficult Scramble for Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks 2275m was the main objective for this trip. I teamed up with my buddy Nick Fitzhardinge for this one – another one of many Nick & Nick tag team missions. For more of Nick’s work, check out his website http://www.nickfitzhardingephotography.ca
We started the trip by scrambling up the west end of Heart Mountain 2135m via the parking lot for Heart Creek. This is an easy scramble that takes approximately two hours from car to summit.
While there is only one main route to follow up, there’s lots of variation for hand holds and for brief moderate scramble moves. There is one “crux” part way up that involves a few more committing moves on well worn hand holds.
I’ve found with the high volume of traffic up this mountain that the holds in the crux have been polished too smooth. You can bypass this crux by travelling around to the left by a few metres to access a ledge. The ledge is equally exposed but offers better holds with more grip. Once above this area its easy scrambling again to the top.
The Traverse from Heart Mountain to Grant MacEwan Peak took us 45 minutes and involved nothing more than a leisurely hike. Normally one would be greeted with views of the front ranges and foothills. We instead had low clouds and a few wet snow flakes.
The Traverse from Grant MacEwan to Twins is much more involved versus the hike over from Heart Mountain’s west summit. Along the ridge there is a difficult down climb section that requires route finding skills and where repelling might be ideal for less confident parties. To avoid this unknown section we descended the east side of the ridge down to treeline, and potholed our way through waist deep slush around and under the crux section. Progress was slow in the rotten snow.
Once around the second crux, we examined it to see how feasible it would be to re-climb on return. Given this was only my second scramble of the year, I wasn’t feeling 4th class scrambling that day. We ruled out coming back this way and could consider alternative options once up on the Twins.
From where we gained the ridge it was an easy-moderate scramble up the First Twin, with some exposure on the climber’s right. We signed the register and were hit with snow flurries at the top. What a great feeling up top – it sure was a lot of work for a peak shy of 2300m!
It took us twenty minutes to then reach the Second Twin. We were surprised to see that the Second Twin also had a summit register despite the First Twin also having one. Still debating whether or not that counts as two peaks or one…
The adventure doesn’t end there. We ruled out side hilling the way we had ascended, and had also ruled out attempting the crux in the snowy weather. Instead, we decided to descend the northeastern slope under the Second Twin to make for a full traverse:
In dropping down the slope we made a complete traverse of the twins. The trade off was a thick bushwhack in the valley below to come across and back up the southeast slope of Grant MacEwan. It was grueling work in the late spring snow but ended up being very direct. The southeast slope of Grant MacEwan turns out to be a massive toilet field for the local bighorn sheep – there was more scat than vegetation!
Once back on Grant MacEwan Peak we followed the scrambling route back across and down the west end of Heart Mountain. There may have been talk of finishing the east traverse of Heart Mountain but we were both done for the day. We had just scrambled Ship’s Prow Peak the previous day. Excellent start to the 2017 season!
Steep Sheep 